Final Project: The oldest cat at the Catfe

What better way to spend a final project than to spend a day hanging out with some cool cats at a trendy cafe? For three hours I trailed cats and cat lovers at the Ferndale Cat Shelter, known popularly as the Catfe. It’s a cute, cozy space that comes with coffee, jazzy music and plenty of cats looking for homes. The place is packed with kooky knick knacks and cat toys. Both lazy adult cats nap in fuzzy beds while rambunctious felines limber up and down the catfe’s shelves (look up from time to time, sometimes there are cats hanging around in the crevices nearing the ceiling). Kittens scurry about playing with cat toys bigger than their faces, and visitors are often seen chasing after those wily little guys in particular. The premise is simple. Catfe visitors can spend as long as they’d like, during operating hours, to visit with the cats  — all of which are adoptable. Volunteer Andrea Dryden said they have a number of cats that they rotate in and out of the catfe as more get adopted. Those that aren’t on site are with volunteers and families that serve as fosters while the cat’s prepare to go into permanent homes.

In a place where prospective pet owners can meet a cat at a local cafe, I knew I wanted to tell a story about pet adoption, but I wanted to shed light on an aspect of pet adoption that isn’t always talked about: how much harder it is for older cats to get adopted than kittens. I sought out the oldest cat at the catfe that day, a 13-year-old named Zoey with gray fur and I asked Dryden to tell me her story. Right off the bat I knew Zoey was different. The cats at the catfe are free to roam around, clamber on top of things and basically do as they please while visitors chase them around. While the other cats were scampering around with toys in the main visiting area, cat napping on fuzzy perches where guests could still pet them as they slept or leaping up and down the shelves, Zoey stayed in her crate in the back room. She was all by herself in this sectioned off area, curled up in a shaded alcove. Not many guests came by, because mostly preoccupied with the myriad of playful felines slinking around in the open areas, not many guests ventured that far into the back of the catfe. Dryden told me that for as long as Zoey’s been in the catfe, she’s preferred to stay in the back. However, while Zoey didn’t like to move around much and enjoyed being a loner, she was still a friendly cat. If someone pet her for long enough, she would come out of her crate to explore for a few minutes, before curling back into the shadows. This made shooting Zoey much harder than the other cats, because she’d situated herself in a difficult lighting area. Additionally, her crate was positioned on the bottom of a stack of crates and she liked to curl up in the back of the box, where it was dark. Thus, I would have to wait for her to poke her head out or move around the box to capture some light that would showcase her face. This pushed me to be creative with my angles, using the bars of the box to play with my focus, trying out different ways to do tight, medium and wide angles. Another funny thing about Zoey was that she soon became curious of my camera, and if I got close to her, at times she would bop my camera lens with her nose.

Ultimately, one thing I learned during this experience shooting cats was that they love to move very rapidly and suddenly. One second they’ll go from sitting still and being lazy, to suddenly twitching or slinking away, and I had to work hard to adjust my shutter speed and aperture setting accordingly to account for their erratic movements. Additionally, with felines that love shadowy spaces, I really had to rely on opening up my aperture to get more light into my photos. All in all, it was a fun experience that really tested the skills I learned this semester, by pushing myself to get creative and to move around in order to get interesting shots. It was also important to plan and anticipate where the cats were going and what they were doing in order to capture the funniest or cutest moments. Plus, the most important lesson, which I plan to take with me far beyond this class, is knowing how to manage my exposure settings and the significance of reciprocity — this knowledge rescued my shots in different lighting situations and helped me capture movement. I’m glad that I was able to tell an interesting story, that was not only visually interesting, but also offered some insight into the pet adoption system and the different experiences older critters might have.